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Eshac: Where Fans Decide Who Gets Signed

Ben Bechar remembers the moment when Eshac first sparked in his mind. At Rye, a swanky whiskey bar in New York’s Flatiron District, Bechar recounts how he mistook his development of immunity to the poor quality of a particular song for actual music appreciation and realized that this vicious cycle would only continue unless someone set the music production business back on its feet. With the creation and launch of Eshac, he’s set out to do just that.

Photo credit to eshac.com

Developed over the course of around two years, Eshac is a website dedicated to promoting and producing music based not on how record executives feel, but how avidly fans appreciate and support each artist’s music. With the setup of the site, its function to give all music an opportunity for success (Eshac itself stands for Every Song Has a Chance) is evident and straight-forward.

Eshac’s functionality is based around creation of artist profiles on the site, balanced by support of “Music Lover” profiles. Once fans have established their presence on the site, they can listen to registered artists and rate their music. This listening and rating system combines to progress each artist from levels one through ten, an accomplishment which means a free album production courtesy of Eshac.

Eshac founder, Ben Bechar Photo credit to eshac.com

According to Bechar and his partner, Lenny Grinberg, the site is programmed to encourage hard work and prevent mass production of mediocre music. Getting from level 1 to level 5, resulting in production of one song, and level 10, rewarded by production of an entire album, is no cake walk.

“It’s not easy to get to level 5,” Bechar explains. “You have to prove that you’re worthy. Then once you pass level 5, you need more songs. You can’t get to level 10 without additional songs.”

Bechar adds that musicians are essentially paying for production of their albums with hits, but the aim of the site is to produce quality music and make money, for Eshac and for the artist. For this reason, artists are held to a higher standard than sites such as YouTube, where only the views matter regardless of quality and selling capability.

“There is a decimal system, so musicians can see clear progress,” Bechar says. “Ratings are worth more than listens. On YouTube, people will listen to terrible music just to hear how bad it is.”

In development at the moment is also the sister site to Eshac, a music news site composed of various bloggers who will report on general music news, the industry, specific events and Eshac-related topics. This site is designed to clearly differentiate Eshac from the realm of organizations like Kickstarter and instead create an online community of musicians who are working to market and produce their music with the support, rather than the money, of their fans.

Photo credit to facebook.com/EshacMusic

After two years, Bechar’s dream of a community where artists can progress together is taking its final shape. Through Eshac, he intends to help music return to production of sounds for the true fan’s ears rather than the soundtrack to a night on the town where so much booze is involved the music doesn’t really matter as long as you can fist pump to it.

If you’re reading this article, chances are you’re a fan of his dream, so I’d recommend sauntering over to Eshac and helping to make it a reality. If you’re still reading…fucking go already!